The Doppler Quarterly Fall 2016 | Page 39

Other Considerations There are many other considerations that contribute to digital innovation success in the cloud. Adoption of the core principals of the Lean Startup Method with its focus on the MVP (minimum viable product), maximizing user value and minimizing waste (time, money, etc.) is absolutely essential to any new initiative. Agile software development - with its focus on working software over documentation, customer and team interaction over “contract negotiation” and responsiveness to change - is the core delivery model for digital innovation. Lean and Agile together form the base methodologies for modern software delivery for any successful innovation program. Finally, a key factor in successful innovation projects is a focus on what matters most and leaving the supporting work in the hands of others. Operating and managing your deployed environment is absolutely critical and cannot be overlooked. However, it is important to define the core of your value proposition - is it running the system or running the business? Many successful digital initiatives are supported internally, but others are operated by the partners hired to build the solution in the first place. Having a single responsible party for ongoing software maintenance, application support, cloud operations, and even key business processes such as support, can free you and your team to focus on the core business concerns that are going to drive your success. CTP can be that responsible party. Summary Digital Innovation is critical to the competitiveness and growth of most industries and there is no better environment for innovation than the cloud. Following these best practices for digital innovation on the cloud is not easy, especially if getting to enterprise scale in the cloud is new to your organization. It is often helpful to have an experienced team to help guide you on your journey in order to move fast and avoid common pitfalls that can get in the way of your success. Jump Start Your Digital Innovation Whether it’s an IoT system that improves the reliability of locomotives or a big data analytics platform that predicts agricultural yields, the more complex and technology-intensive your project, the more we like working on it. cloudtp.com/digital FALL 2016 | THE DOPPLER | 37